Warm Shadow
by Sephielya J. Maxwell
Summary: Russia makes good on his threats to send Lithuania to Siberia, and Lithuania is grateful to return.


Posting my kink!meme fills here. I went as Liet!Anon there!

- - - - - -

_Cold. _

Cold was a word, a matter of sound and letters. It came to mind when someone mentioned winter, or snow. Cold, to Lithuania, was putting on a coat and scarf. Watching his breath cloud and billow outwards as if a puff of smoke from a chimney. And maybe, if he stayed out too long, a numb nose and toes, which would tingle as they warmed when he sat by the fire.

Cold, was a word that Lithuania could not currently force past his numb and trembling lips. A sweep of his slightly warmer tongue only worked for an instant, and he knew that he was only making it worse. They would only dry out faster that way, and already he nursed a split on th middle of his lower lip. Neither the two blankets, nor the surrounding bodies gathered any warmth either. There was a young man next to him who had tried to give the smaller brunette his blanket earlier that night. The man had been shivering, lips blue and cheeks gaunt as he held out the thin and ratted sheet. 'You need it,' the man had said, 'you are our hope.'

Lithuania would have cried if he had any tears left to be shed. And even if he could, he had no doubt that they would have frozen before they reached the end of his chin. 'No,' Liet had told the man calmly, 'Please, keep it. Don't suffer for me. I'm not worth it!' But the man had smiled, his own dry lips splitting open, but then he probably couldn't feel them anymore. His hands were dry and cracked, bleeding from the harsh conditions of his labors at the camp. The man _smiled, _his eyes wet, and he spoke words that the nation had not heard for a long time,

'_Lithuania! My fatherland! You are like health. Only he who has lost you may know your true worth.'_*

Lithuania could not freeze, not the way that his people could. He felt it in his body though—not exactly coldness. What he could feel was the absolute lack of the presence of warmth. As if it had never existed inside of him at all, his very bones seemed to radiate nothing but icy chill. His breath, what little there was of it, created a fog so thick every time that he breathed that it covered his vision temporarily. It was as if the very moisture of his breath was freezing right in front of his face.

He remembered somehow, someone mentioning that freezing to death would be a mercy. 'You go numb,' they'd said, 'and you simply fall asleep.' Well, Lithuania would like to tell them first hand that this was _not _true. The whimpering of the men around him, strong men, men bigger than himself, could attest to that. When the blood began to recede into the middle of the body, the center of heat, it _hurt like hell._ A _s_tinging like thousands of needles, the only thing that he could feel in his hands and feet.

And no matter how he tried, he could not warm his people. Lithuania held their hands in his, but neither of them could feel it. He breathed on them, rubbed their cold skin—he even prayed. He felt as if he were a ghost, an intangible being incapable of helping his tortured children. And there were _so many of them... _Not enough food, not enough clothing, overcrowding and poor insulations for the dwellings were just the beginnings of the suffrages here.

And why, why were they here? He knew all too well why. Because he'd refused Russia. The nation who previously owned him had extended his hand once again, and he had pushed it aside stubbornly. 'I am me,' he could remember saying, with all of his children behind him, 'I am not yours.'

Oh, how foolish. How terribly, utterly foolish! This suffering could have all been avoided. But the cries of his beloved people were just too loud for him to ignore at the time. They loved him, believed in him. All along he had been told that he was nothing but a fragment of a shadow of Russia—and he had believed it for over a hundred years. He had gotten just a taste of freedom, of remembering who he was and what he could be. Considering his lifetime, it was a short and sweet dream.

Beside him, the young man with the tattered blanket had ceased his shivering, his chest no longer rising and falling for breath. With a heavy heart, Lithuania closed his forest green eyes—a color he felt as if he'd long forgotten here in this desolate place. His children at home were dying too, forgetting what they lived for. He could no longer allow them to die for him.

- - - - - -

Feeling returned slowly to him. Heat spread throughout his body like electricity, beginning from where ever those calloused fingers touched him. The hands he had refused not long ago now breathed life into him—hot, invigorating life. Lips sealed with his own, wet, moist, and lush. A kiss so long that he had to hold his breath, every inch of him open and bare to the other. Gasping with renewed breath, he arched into every touch, moaned at every caress.

Even if the hands that gripped his hips were harsh and bruising, the mouth that sucked and nipped at the skin over his heart, his precious Vilnius, was filled with such heat that he didn't care. His split lip was nibbled gently, and a fire shot through him. Pain was heat, and as his people repented, signing what they had to, and surrendering land to the children of his man, Lithuania spread himself willingly to accept Russia's invasion. And as their bodies became one—with much more force than was really necessary, Russia whispered sweetly into Lithuania's ear,

"What... do you say?" Heated breath that tickled the hair at Liet's ear. And the brunette clung tightly, arms about the blond's broad shoulders as his thighs tightened about Russia's wide hips.

"Thank you," Lithuania whispered back, lips finding purchase on the blond's neck. "_Thank you_!" Louder the second time because of the thrust that rocked his smaller body.

"..And?" Russia's breath was baited, and there was only a split-seconds hesitation from the brunette which he had welcomed back into his home.

"..._I am yours_!"

Even if he was to live within Russia's shadow once more—at least that shadow was safe as the strong arms around him now. And it was so... _warm._


End file.
